cliff is something that they recognized in the senate. and i also think that for senate republicans and even some democrats, it's not as much of an issue to be able to take home politically the idea of voting for a tax cut as opposed to a tax increase which the house would be doing tomorrow. also just the idea of momentum. they've got the momentum. they don't want to blow it if they've got it. >> you know this well. a lot of democrats especially liberal democrats, they're not happy that the president raised that $250,000 threshold to $450,000 since he had spoken of the $250,000 figure for months and months and months. ran his re-election campaign on it. >> and won. and there was a rebellion today among democrats in the morning. tom harken went on the senator floor and said he did not like the deal that was emerging. i don't know if that caused them to go back into the room and change some things or if some democrats just didn't know what the details were. but it took a lot of convincing by the white house, there were conference calls toda